Elderly hurt by NSW surgery wait list: ALP

Elderly patients across NSW are bearing the brunt of record elective surgery waiting times, the opposition says.

Labor health spokesman Walt Secord said those languishing on wait lists for knee and hip replacements and cataract removal were the human face of massive funding cuts to health and hospitals.

"Unfortunately, patients wait at every stage in NSW. They wait for an ambulance; they wait outside the emergency department; they wait inside the emergency department; they wait for a bed and then they are discharged early to free up the bed," Mr Secord said on Sunday.

He said elective surgery waiting times had climbed to 229 days, with more than 74,000 patients on the lists, almost half of whom were waiting for orthopaedic surgeries and cataract procedures.

These patients faced some of the longest wait times in Australia, Mr Secord said.

Health Minister Jillian Skinner said NSW carried the largest caseloads of patients in the country, and still managed to keep wait times for cataract extraction and orthopaedic surgeries well within the clinically recommended timeframe of 365 days.

"New models of care have been rolled out in NSW hospitals to support timely surgery, including the High Volume Short Stay Surgical Model, which concentrates suitable planned surgical cases to dedicated high-volume, short-stay units," Ms Skinner said.

"Local Health Districts also implement local strategies, including reallocating theatre time to specialties experiencing greater demand and pooling surgical lists where clinically appropriate."